Crystal ball 2013

I offered 10 predictions for 2012 and didn’t do too badly, although I missed the big one (I predicted Obama wouldn’t be reelected). This year our friends at NRO invited me to submit four or five predictions for 2013 the week before last, on a few hours’ notice. Here is my response:

I don’t quite know what happened this past year, but the future is a piece of cake. Looking out to the next year, I clearly foresee:

We will not cheer up in 2013. The conservative funk will continue through the year.

Obamacare will experience “unexpected” glitches as the date of full implementation approaches. None of President Obama’s predictions about the beneficial effects of Obamacare will materialize. But that’s okay. We don’t remember what they were anyway.

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln will win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Daniel Day-Lewis will win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the president. No one will observe that the film destroys the progressive critique of Lincoln first articulated by Richard Hofstadter in The American Political Tradition that virtually all bright high-school students in American-history classes absorb one way or another.

Sales of guns and ammunition will set new records. Despite the current political/media hysteria, rifles will remain among the least likely weapons of choice for murderers, trailing behind (according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports) knives, blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.), and personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.).

NRO has posted my predictions along with those of such illustrious conservatives as David Gelernter and Jonah Goldberg in Crystal Ball 2013.